First day in Cochabamba

I am writing this on Tuesday morning.

Yesterday was our first full day in Cochabamba. Robin and I slept in quite late (at least by the clock, since we are two hours ahead of Central Time). We had fresh bread and peanut butter for breakfast.

We got in touch with Tony, the Mano a Mano pilot, to get a flight set up to the Salt Flats (Salar) of Uyuni.

After lunch we went into town. We road the local bus, or tufi, for 1.5 bolivianos each (that is about 14 cents). Robin and I toured a convent that is in the process of being restored. There are still nuns there, but not in the older sections they want to restore. The convent is about 250 years old. It was a cloistered convent so we saw turn tables the nuns used to pass items to the outside.

[see pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelwx/]

We made it back to Patricia and Tony's on our own.

We went to a nice restaurant for dinner. We met with Mario Arranibar and his wife. Mario is one of the people who started the search and rescue group here. We will see them again on Friday for their 20th anniversary celebration. He said he is going to parachute before the program using the chute I sent down last year with all the fire fighting gear.

We told him we were going to the Salar and he said the local airline is flying a DC3 there. I knew there was rumors of this. He said he would get information about it for us. If this comes about we will do that instead of the little Mano a Mano plane. My dream come true! Flying in a DC3.

Today we are going to Mano a Mano with Patricia and Tony for the English class they teach.